


shallow (i'm falling)

by rusticlace



Series: cannabliss; nct oneshots [2]
Category: NCT (Band), Newkidd (Band), UNB (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Mafia AU, Onesided, ganglife!au, mafia!au, mentioned nomin, slight depression, trigger warning, yuta centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 07:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16827778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rusticlace/pseuds/rusticlace
Summary: hansol and yuta have loved much too carelessly, and left each other with scars only they can fix





	shallow (i'm falling)

**Author's Note:**

> i worked on this for months but changed the plot when i was typing it out today lol
> 
> shallow's [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/11170713058/playlist/0ntFdOzbXKbu2owTCxt8Ii?si=jTC2pHsbQFqCvN5sy1SEPw)

Hansol's eyes remind Yuta of a doll's—big, round and fairly innocent—his skin is pale under his dark jeans and black button-down, glazed with sweat from their unsaintly deeds and the humidity of the room. The buttons of Hansol's shirt are loose, exposing the chiseled expense of his broad chest and collarbone that are shamelessly littered with purple bruises. It makes him look like a real life doll, a porcelain one, prized for its exquisite beauty of rose red lips, glassy blue eyes and fragility.

Except, Hansol is anything but fragile. Yuta remembers the time of Hansol's reign as first-in-command; a time of deceptive smiles, cold blue eyes and terrorizing measures. Taeyong seems a drastic comparison to him, even though the kids are always living in fear of Taeyong's petty wrath. Yuta knows much too well. Hansol is the reason why they have this gang, and why the younger members can afford so much luxury when it comes to their equipment and well-being. The blood that was always on Hansol's hands, and how he drifted the halls of their old headquarters smelling like death—this was the price that he paid for the comfortable ways of this gang's livelihood. Yuta doesn't miss it, not when the older had no room for light, and love was lost on him.

"I missed you, " the older croaks into Yuta's chest, sounding unbearably torn up.

Yuta's heart burns with a sense of disorientation.

"What's wrong? " Yuta's fingers are tangled in the blonde mess of Hansol's bed hair, face scrunched up with worry at Hansol's apparent conflict. However, the older only shakes his head in response:

"I'm leaving for business on Friday. "

_Oh._

He should have predicted that this was to come, Hansol doesn't usually pay much attention to the younger until he's going to be away for a long time and starved from any form of physical pleasure. It's a convenient arrangement anyways for the both of them—Yuta is lonely, very much blindly in love with the older, and Hansol doesn't need any strings to tie him and his expansionist ambitions down.

"Will you come back soon? " Yuta is naive, as if Hansol doesn't leave him after every fuck to wake up in a frigid and empty bed.

"If you think about me often, I'll return to your side in no time. "

Hansol doesn't tell him that he will be gone for a month nor does Yuta tell the other that thinking about someone only makes the time drag on longer. However, the younger already knows—some things never change, just like how love is lost on Hansol.

* * *

Yuta spends the following month alone in the mansion, mostly sitting around the balcony that looks out to the endless blue sea. Sometimes he thinks of him, wonders how he is doing out there, alone. Most of the time, Yuta only stares at the waves as they come crashing into the shore, washing away the gold of the shore, wishing that he is part of a cycle that only lives to eradicate and create. He rarely goes out to the headquarters just so he can avoid human interaction and the pitiful look everyone else gives him, surviving on the takeout that Jaemin often grabs for him or Taeyong's cooking when the current first-in-command isn't so busy trying to run a syndicate.

There's a void in his heart that he does not wish to acknowledge, for he knows that once he succumbs to the dull ache in his heart, he is bound to be doomed. 

Then one day, Jaemin catches up to him.

The poor boy looks exhausted, the Japanese notes.

"Hyung, do you love Hansol hyung? " Jaemin starts cautiously, unsure, as if he is threading into dangerous territory—it seems like Hansol is a word one will associate with danger. However, Yuta only smiles kindly, beckoning for the younger boy to come and join him for tea at the empty dining table.

The older is thoughtful: "Is this about Jeno? "

Jaemin is not effortlessly troubled by mundane things unlike Renjun and Mark . The young hacker is only concerned over simple, significant things like his computers, his latest codes, and (most unfortunately) Lee Jeno.

"No, hyung, " the young one says. "I'm worried about you. "

The ceramic cup in Yuta's hand falls to the table with an ungracious slam—a bad habit the man has to correct before Taeyong starts charging him for all the china he has broken—and Jaemin fears for its wholeness. He swears he didn't mean to, Jaemin just—

"I do, Jaemin. Maybe with all my heart, but it doesn't matter when he cannot bring himself to spare a little love for himself, much less, me, " Yuta speaks, however it is transparent that Jaemin can no longer bring himself to respond. Not when the Japanese's every word makes perfect sense and resonates to his own unspoken misery, to both their complications. The things they both do for a measly excuse labelled love: Jaemin's desperation for a Jeno that isn't so consumed by blood lust, and Yuta's meek desire for Hansol to love him back.

People say that Jaemin resembles Hansol and Yuta's lovechild. Now Yuta can see why—Jaemin's eyes are doll-like, frosty when they should have been honey. Just like Hansol's, they are unnaturally huge and tinted with irreproachability. However, they do not bear the same malice that Hansol's chilling irises carry, instead they are glazed with the sadness of an inanimate puppet.

It frightens the Japanese man, how a child can look so forlorn, so worn out when he is just at his prime—he sees himself in Jaemin, especially his eyes: The way they always look so tragically despaired. It is so incredibly disturbing that Yuta doesn't sleep that night, and the next one. Instead he lets a pair of cerulean eyes stare back at him in the dead of the night, and haunt him to no end.

Terrified, it drives Yuta into a panicked frenzy of drowning himself in his abandoned workload, desperately attempting to get rid of the damned look Jaemin has etched into his mind. He does not want to be reminded of his own doleful state. It's so fucking pathetic. When he looks into the mirror, he barely recognizes himself—the fire in his eyes are dimmed, his cheeks are hollow, his lips have paled from his constant state of fatigue—and it's the saddest thing he has to paint into his mind.

This is what Hansol has done to him; the one man he had loved so much. Once Hansol had been a boy with auburn hair and sugar sweet smiles, once Yuta had been in love with his introverted yet bright personality. But all the older man had done for Yuta (when Yuta had given up his scholarship, when he had dropped his dream to become a soccer player to help Hansol build up his empire) was to break his heart and trust.

He ends up smashing the poor mirror against the wall, for Yuta could not bear to even glance at his reflection for a mere second. The shards of glass sprinkle themselves onto the flawless marble floor, and he almost screams in agony at the sight that greats him.

There on the polished floor was hundreds of his reflection staring back at him with a sinister glint.

* * *

April brings forth the bloom of cherry blossoms. Yuta watches over the household with a longing smile: Mark patches things up with Donghyuck after their big fight during the previous summer, Taeyong finds solace in Jaehyun and his incurable habit of stress-killing, and Doyoung learns to move on from the past with the help of Jungwoo.

Maybe the world is not kind to him, but he lives on the warmth that radiates from every corner of this once nearly deserted house; it doesn't seek to fill his heart to the brim like how Hansol's presence would, however it is good enough for him, puts a smile to his face and lights a small flame in his eyes. Hansol had been gone for almost two months now—there were no calls nor text messages—the last time he had heard any news of him was from Taeil, who had told Yuta that Hansol was doing fine in god knows where.

As if it had concerned Yuta in the first place.

Sometimes Yuta wakes up in the early mornings, wondering why his heart still feels so vacant; sometimes he will stare at the ceiling in a daze, falling back into those good times when there had been a possibility that Hansol had felt the same about him as he did, Hansol. He take's a painful trip down memory lane, walks through the short hallway of the dorm that he and Hansol had shared in college, finds the shadow of a former him tucked into the tender embrace of the older boy. Both their faces are youthful, plagued by little worries. Back in those days, Yuta didn't fret over things like planning a heist or calculating and minimizing risks, neither did Hansol let his inhibitions consume the sad remainder of his heart.

Sometimes Yuta meditates on whether there is any way they could go back to those days, because he'd give anything to have the Hansol of before back.

Yet it seems, life is never altruistic. Even if the younger offers his everything, the world cannot become the wish-granting factory he wishes for it to be.

"What are you doing here? Don't you have work? " Taeil shoots him down with a question regarding work the moment he steps into the cafe. The Japanese male can only bring himself to roll his eyes, moving past their consiligliere in preference of a strong cup of coffee.

He places his order with Renjun, who looks bored beyond words having to tend to the cashier: A caramel macchiato frappé with three shots of espresso, and a glazed donut. It's indulgent, something he hasn't had in a span of two months (really, he just couldn't stomach down anything that contained caffeine or sugar). Taeil shoves him to the corner of the cafe where two love seats are placed facing each other, a low coffee table situated between the seats.

"What are you doing? " Yuta hisses as Taeil semi-manhandles him onto the couch and settles right beside him.

"You know what I'm going to do, " Taeil snaps back, opening his mouth to continue only to shut it tight when Renjun comes walking with Yuta's order.

"Hyung, " Renjun greets, and Yuta acknowledges with a nod. The consiligliere is quick to shoo the Chinese boy, waiting until he is back at his position at the cash register before speaking again:

"How long do you think you and Ji Hansol can avoid each other for? It's been more than half a fucking decade, how long do the both of you think y'all can get at it for, huh? "

"Wait, why am I getting the brute of it? "

"It's for your own good, Nakamoto. Don't think I don't know about you brooding at home for the past two months. " There's an unknown threat laced in Taeil's words that manages to shake the Japanese. He really wants to put forth an argument, but he's honestly too tired to hold his front and today is the first day in almost two months of isolation that he has managed to drag himself out to appreciate the cherry blossoms that conveniently bloom right by Taeil's cafe.

The cherry blossoms (Yuta sighs), they remind him of home (just as Hansol did).

He'll never get any better if his thoughts persistently linger on Ji fucking Hansol.

Taeil leaves him be after invoking no reaction from the other. Finally, he is left to gobble up the glazed donut peacefully. The donut is quickly finished and he considers whether he should get himself another when a text from Taeyong alerts him to return to headquarters quickly.

Yuta leaves his coffee half-finished and exits the cafe, making a left turn on the sidewalk towards the direction of headquarters. When he lifts his glance away from the concrete floors he is met with the sight of the man he had been waiting for since the beginning of February, when the frost of winter was just melting away to make way for the coming of spring. Ji Hansol is standing under a cherry blossom that had been bleeding bright pink from its many flowers, wearing a clean white button-down and black ripped jeans as if he'd been waiting for Yuta to come to him all this time. To come home to _him_.

It makes Yuta's weakened heart beat in odd rates. He is so so so afraid of getting all his hopes high, because he has known Hansol for so many years and he never ever changes. What makes the both of them so sure that this time will be it, that this time Yuta's hopes will not end in crushing defeat?

Maybe it's because this time Hansol turns around and looks at the other not with cold blue eyes but honest brown eyes; maybe because Yuta is rushing to him, and this time there is no hesitation as he opens his arms to hold the younger close to him; because it no longer matters to Yuta that Hansol has no room for light, and love is lost on him—it all hurts, and squeezes the younger's lungs but he doesn't care. All the greatest loves end in violence, and Yuta will walk through hell and back to be with Ji Hansol.

"I missed you, " Hansol choked out.

"I thought about you often, " Yuta reassured.

"I know, I know. " There are tears falling from the corner of the older's eyes as he buries himself into the crook of Yuta's neck.

"I'm sorry, Na Yuta, " it comes out so small, so unlike the Hansol he is used to.

So what if Hansol had no room for light, and love was lost for him?

(I'm off the deep end, watch as I dive in, I'll never meet the ground. Crash through the surface where they can't hurt us, we're far from the shallow now.)

"I know. Just never leave me again. "

Yuta will still love him for this lifetime and beyond.

(We're far from the shallow now.)

**Author's Note:**

> the ending was rushed i'm so sorry
> 
> basically late note:  
> i forgot to explain the significance of cherry blossoms (sakuras) in this story. in japanese culture, the cherry blossom represents fragility and the beauty of life. it's a reminder that life is overwhelmingly beautiful but that it is also tragically short. in the story, the cherry blossoms are supposed to represent the tragic beauty of hansol's affections for yuta, since hansol is not capable of expressing himself very well and is also not committed to any semblance of stable relationship with yuta. however, as hansol has has returned a promising form of affection to yuta at the end of the story, it showcases how the younger man has found the beauty in his life: ji hansol.
> 
> (very onesided, you were warned.)
> 
> kudos+comments appreciated!


End file.
